Writing and Fishing, Not Necessarily in That Order

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Just Saying No

I don’t mean when your three kids are little and you’ve dragged them all to the grocery store and you’re only in the first aisle and already, each of them have asked at least ten times for Gooey Candy Bars or Krispy Chocolate Cereal or Saturated-with-Sugar Soda. It’s pretty easy to say no then…well, until you get to the last aisle and your head’s about to explode from the 5,769th question and you scream, “Fine. Get the candy! Get the cereal! Get the Coke! I don’t care as long as you don’t ask me ANY MORE QUESTIONS!”

Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, for writers, saying no is a whole ‘nother story. We take jobs we really don’t want to do, or we get involved in jobs that are so demanding that we’re losing money with all the rewrites, or we commit to a project that we know we don’t have time for. And then we’re miserable and wishing and wondering why we didn’t just say no.

Cathy, just finished your most recent blog–Just Say No–and I liked it very much. Hard to know when to walk away from a writing project, but after you do (or don’t), you always know whether you did the right thing. Good job. I started looking at the blogs on the site back through the years and started reading from 2006–Wow! Ten years ago. Now I plan to go back and read some of the older ones every once in a while. They are funny and perceptive–like *The Purple Cow*, for instance, by a woman named Angela, I think. Enjoyable writing, all around. All the best to you, Linda

I'm always fishing for sparkly new ideas to put in one of my children's stories. Sometimes, I fish in the shower and sometimes, I fish around the more interesting spots in Atlanta. And sometimes, I might even fish from a dock.

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